Portable Bluetooth speakers have liberated our music from wires, but they are only awesome technology if they are not dead. To that end, Ecoxgear has two new products it’s showing off. One has 50+ hours of battery life, the other has a built-in solar panel that will keep it charged. These speakers cannot die.
The Ecoxgear line of speakers from Grace Digital ain’t pretty, but dang it, if the brand hasn’t been at the forefront of building indestructible gear. A few years ago it trotted out one of the world’s first waterproof Bluetooth speakers. In my recent massive shootout, that didn’t turn out to be that awesome, but regardless, it’s impressive that the company recognised the consumer need before others.
With the new ECOSMART 4000 HD Solar Powered Speaker and the ECOPEBBLE Powerbank, Ecoxgear is getting into the battery game. The Ecopebble is a $US100 little speaker with a built-in 10,000 mAh charging bank. It gets 50 hours of battery life, way more than I’ve seen anywhere before. The $US130 Ecosmart 4000 has two speaker drivers instead of just one, but it only has 18 hours of battery life. Luckily, it has a built in “high density” solar panel so you can keep it charged forever.
As with Ecoxgear’s previous models, this speaker is waterproof, dustproof, and shock resistant.
Of course, as with Ecoxgear’s previous kit, the problem here could be execution. The Ecopebble Powerbank sounds promising, especially if it looks like the old one.
The Ecosmart, however, could run into problems. I mean look at that hulking thing above. Even if you can get over its looks, it seems a bit too cumbersome to really be portable. What’s more, the company’s products don’t sound especially good either.
We’ll have to wait until we try the products out to very least, we can hope that other companies with better design and audio chops take a cue.